Pornhub bans 'deepfake' videos generated by Artificial Intelligence

Porn actresses line-up at the opening of the "Venus" erotic fair in Berlin October 17, 2013Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters

Following the footsteps of Discord and Gfycat, Pornhub, the world's largest porn video website has decided to ban 'deepfakes', the Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated videos that realistically edit new faces on to the bodies of pornographic actors.

Pornhub has taken such a move stating that 'deepfakes' videos fall under its rule against non-consensual porn. As per Pornhub website policies, non-consensual porn includes deepfakes, revenge porn, and anything which is published without a person's consent or permission.

"We do not tolerate any nonconsensual content on the site and we remove all said content as soon as we are made aware of it," told Pornhub to Motherboard.

It was Motherboard which first reported the widespread usage of 'deepfakes' on porn websites. On December 2017, Motherboard has reported about a porn video created with machine learning algorithm, and interestingly, it featured the face of 'Wonder Woman' actress Gal Gadot. Even though there is an uncanny valley effect at play, people who see the video for a glance will feel that it is Gadot who has acted in such a video.

Most of the deepfake videos and clips on Pornhub are labeled in the name of celebrities. But when it comes to the general public, many people would not be knowing that their deepfake video might be trending on porn websites. These videos could show faces of people who might have never actually recorded a sexual act.

According to latest updates, Pornhub is reportedly planning to request the users to flag the videos before removing it. However, it still remains unclear on how Pornhub will remove such a large number of deepfake videos from their website with a process called 'flagging'.

Even though websites like Pornhub, Discord, and Gfycat are implementing various measures to ban such videos from their website, deepfake's central community hub on Reddit remains untouched.